Professor Hamilton's new book explores how to keep neighborhoods intact, affordable while pursuing environmental goals

The river walk in San Antonio, Texas, is a popular shopping and dining area catering to tourists.

By CHARLOTTE HSU

Sustainable cities can — and should — be affordable, too.

That’s one takeaway from a new book that explores how urban neighborhoods can preserve their culture and diversity while pursuing goals such as adding green space, supporting urban farms and cleaning up industrial waste.

Too often, these objectives have been at odds, say Trina Hamilton and Winifred Curran, co-editors of “Just Green Enough: Urban Development and Environmental Gentrification,” published by Routledge in December.

“Green city rankings are very popular, but many of the cities at the top of these lists also happen to be some of the most expensive places to live, like San Francisco or Vancouver, where single family homes now average over a million dollars,” says Hamilton, associate professor of geography in UB’s College of Arts and Sciences. “In our book, we wanted to present alternative narratives, to talk about how cities can go green the right way.”